Alex Lifeson<\/a>, and their fans somehow made it all the way back to a spectacular Rush concert, in an arena they\u2019d played 20 times before.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tIn 2015, on that same stage, Lee, Lifeson, and Peart performed what turned out to be their final show together at the end of their R40 tour.\u00a0\u201cI do hope we meet again sometime,\u201d Lee told the crowd then, after Peart uncharacteristically stepped to the front of the stage with his bandmates for a final bow. Not long after, Peart was diagnosed with glioblastoma, and he died on Jan. 7, 2020, leaving behind his wife, Carrie Nuttall, and daughter, Olivia. For a while after his passing, Lee and Lifeson weren\u2019t even interested in picking up their instruments.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\tSunday\u2019s show was filled with overt, oft-tear-inducing tributes to Peart, but the most important salute to him lasted the entire concert, via the performance and courage of a woman he never got to meet. At 43, Nilles is three decades younger than Lifeson and Lee,\u00a0with a jazz-fusion background and a gig with Jeff Beck on her resum\u00e9. On Sunday night, she took on an impossible, no-doubt terrifying assignment \u2014 standing in for one of the greatest drummers of all time, in front of one of the most persnickety fanbases of all time \u2014 with a mix of precision and snare-snapping brutality that felt more reminiscent of Peart\u2019s All the World\u2019s a Stage<\/em> era than his later, jazz-tempered approach.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tShe didn\u2019t always choose to replicate Peart\u2019s parts to a microscopic level, subtly reinventing \u201cSubdivisions\u201d with her own feel, for instance, but evoked his essence throughout. And for the most indelible percussive moments in the catalog \u2014\u00a0the intro to show opener \u201cXanadu,\u201d the climactic fills in \u201cTom Sawyer,\u201d every tricky little ultra-syncopated bit of \u201cLa Villa Strangiato\u201d and \u201cYYZ\u201d \u2014\u00a0she simply nailed everything, down to the last 32nd note. At times, the musical likeness was so uncanny that it evoked Whoopi Goldberg in Ghost<\/em>, the spirit of the departed animating her limbs. If Nilles was possessed, however, it was clearly an enjoyable experience: She was downright gleeful by the end of \u201cTom Sawyer,\u201d and even seemed to enjoy the challenges of three parts of \u201c2112.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tIt was, perhaps unsurprisingly, one of the most emotional Rush concerts ever. One of the many gifts that Peart left behind was a catalog sturdy enough to hold the weight of grief. For all of Rush\u2019s onstage humor \u2014\u00a0 present Sunday night with pre-filmed sketches including South Park<\/em> bits and new appearances by Paul Rudd and Jason Segel as their Rush-loving I Love You, Man <\/em>characters \u2014\u00a0 their songs are filled with Peart\u2019s attempts to grapple with life\u2019s biggest questions. One of those tracks, \u201cBravado,\u201d was the night\u2019s first Peart tribute, prefaced with interview audio from the drummer. \u201cIf the dream is won, though everything is lost,\u201d Lee sang, as footage of the drummer drove an arena full of grown men (and more women than many prior Rush tours) to tears. \u201cWe will pay the price\/ But we will not count the cost.\u201d At points, Lee sounded like he was close to tears himself. Lifeson\u2019s closing guitar solo, looping through arpeggios, managed to take in all of that emotion and quadruple it.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\tIn keeping with the show\u2019s defiance of mortality, Lee and Lifeson seemed to have almost aged in reverse since 2015, with Lifeson notably trimmer and musically nimble, and Lee pummeling his bass while skipping around the stage faster than any 72-year-old should be able to manage. They made a point of starting out with \u201cXanadu,\u201d demonstrating that their spines could still handle double-neck instruments and their fingers can still handle 1977 prog riffs.<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\t\u201cWhen we started thinking about this tour, we thought, well, we can\u2019t play so many songs like we used to,\u201d Lee said. \u201cWe\u2019re no spring chickens. But guess what? We\u2019re gonna play a lot of songs.\u201d With that, they kicked into \u201cFreewill,\u201d unplayed since 2011, with Lee daring to take on its stratospheric final verse, and Lifeson splaying the song open with a cosmic-shred take on its solo. Lee\u2019s recent vocal coaching hasn\u2019t taken him all the way back to the glorious peaks of his Seventies screeching, but it\u2019s undeniably left his voice stronger than it was 11 years ago, with its top octave once again available to him. Leaving some of the keyboard parts to new touring player Loren Gold (who played with the Who) was clearly liberating for Lee, who still couldn\u2019t resist playing some key synth riffs himself.<\/p>\n
\n\tWhen the band played a ferocious \u201cRed Barchetta,\u201d it was hard not to think of Rush itself as the titular car,\u00a0a hotrodded remnant of a \u201cbetter, vanished time,\u201d somehow still roaring down the road long after it should be possible.\u00a0 During another song, 1991\u2019s \u201cDreamline,\u201d Lee sang one of Peart\u2019s best, most accurate lines: \u201cWe\u2019re only immortal for a limited time.\u201d But as proven by the rest of the show, and by the life and work of Neil Peart, limits are made to be broken.<\/p>\n
\n\tRush Fifty Something Tour<\/a> Setlist<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\tSet 1<\/em>
\u201cXanadu\u201d
\u201cLimelight\u201d
\u201cFar Cry\u201d
\u201cSubdivisions\u201d
\u201cFreewill\u201d
\u201cBravado\u201d
\u201cCaravan\u201d
\u201cLa Villa Strangiato\u201d
\u201cVital Signs\u201d
\u201cThe Spirit of Radio\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n
\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n<\/h2>\n<\/section>\n
\n\tSet 2<\/em>
\u201c2112 Part I: Overture\u201d
\u201c2112 Part II: The Temples of Syrinx\u201d
\u201c2112 Part VII: Grand Finale\u201d
\u201cDistant Early Warning\u201d
\u201cRed Barchetta\u201d
\u201cDreamline\u201d
\u201cNatural Science\u201d
\u201cTime Stand Still\u201d
\u201cRed Sector A\u201d
\u201cYYZ\u201d
\u201cThe Garden\u201d
\u201cTom Sawyer\u201d<\/p>\n\n\tEncore<\/em>
\u201cBy-Tor & The Snow Dog\u201d
\u201cWorking Man\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.rollingstone.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI can get back home,\u201d Geddy Lee yelped early in Rush\u2018s first show in 11 years, amidst an apocalyptic flurry of drum fills from new touring member Anika Nilles on 2007\u2019s \u201cFar Cry.\u201d As the rest of Rush\u2019s Fifty Something Tour kickoff Sunday at Los Angeles\u2019 Kia Forum demonstrated, that particular Neil Peart lyric \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2450312,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25179],"tags":[348628,388689,481315,388575,340343],"class_list":["post-2450311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-alex-lifeson","tag-anika-nilles","tag-fifty-something-tour","tag-geddy-lee","tag-rush"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Rush-Tour-Opener-Review-Geddy-Lee-and-Alex-Lifesons-Triumph.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450311"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2450313,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450311\/revisions\/2450313"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2450312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}